Home » AFL Footy News » Instagram’s new tools will help athletes copping racist abuse, but it may be too little too late
Instagram’s new tools will help athletes copping racist abuse, but it may be too little too late
Recent months have seen a string of incidents where athletes from Australia and around the world were targets of racist online abuse.
Now, Instagram is launching a set of tools it says are designed to protect against this happening.
Key points:
“Limits” allows any user to limit comments and DM requests during spikes of increased attention
AFL’s inclusion manager says abuse of players becoming “more persistent and constant”
eSafety Commissioner says tweaks to Instagram are welcome but “the horse has bolted”
Will they help?
One of the most prominent international examples of such abuse came in July, after the Euro 2020 final, when three black players on England’s soccer team were
The laws are likely to light a fire under platforms that have been otherwise slow to respond to user complaints about racist or other kinds of abuse.
Last week, the federal government laid out the minimum safety expectations that big tech companies will need to meet under the Act to avoid fines.
These include taking “actions against such emerging risks such as ‘volumetric attacks’ where ‘digital lynch mobs’ seek to overwhelm a victim with abuse”, communications minister Paul Fletcher said at the time.
An example of a volumetric attack is the type of mass-trolling Australian athletes such as Eddie Betts, as well as other public figures, such as Magda Szubanski, have had to recently endure.
‘Need for social and cultural change programs’
Ms Inman Grant said there was also a need for social and cultural change programs that target racism at its core, rather than simply penalising or blocking those who direct such abuse at others.
The scale of the cultural change that’s needed was evident last month, after former Crows captain Taylor Walker made racist remarks about North Adelaide player Robbie Young at an SANFL game.
Walker has been suspended for six matches, issued a $20,000 fine and appeared in an apology video this week alongside Young.
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Adelaide Crows player Taylor Walker apologises to Robbie Young.
Prominent members of the Indigenous AFL community have criticised the video, saying the video missed the mark and could have been more heartfelt.
In June last year, eSafety and the AFL teamed up to launch the Play it Fair Online campaign, which encourages players and fans to be respectful online.
“Every time we see a player copping abuse online, it’s extremely demoralising and undermines the integrity of the game, but we should also take some encouragement from the outpouring of support that we have seen from other fans and players to drown out a lot of this negativity,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“This is our main call to action — if you see someone you know copping abuse online, be an upstander, not a bystander, and call out this behaviour.”
